Apple breaks corporate profit records

Apple has enjoyed the most successful quarter in not only its own history, but corporate history itself.

The Californian tech giant reported third-quarter profits of $18 billion (just short of £11.9 billion), having sold over 74 million iPhones in those three months – at an average rate of 34,000 handsets per hour.

The quarterly profit record was hitherto held by Russian oil company Gazprom, which made $16.2 billion (£10.7 billion) of profit in one quarter during 2011.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook said: "We'd like to thank our customers for an incredible quarter, which saw demand for Apple products soar to an all-time high. Our revenue grew 30 per cent over last year to $74.6 billion (£49.3 billion), and the execution by our teams to achieve these results was simply phenomenal."